A CRIMINAL “fixer” on trial for the murder of Toxteth dad David Corridon told jurors he only set him up to be burgled.

Tyrone Griffiths, 34, said he was approached by Kelly Smith, the sister of David Corridon’s ex-partner.

He said she told him he had around £40,000 in cash hidden in his house, which were profits from drug dealing, and asked if he could arrange for it to be stolen while he was out.

But Griffiths, of Hylton Road, Allerton, said that Nicholas Nelson, the man he brought in to carry out the “graft”, got it wrong and he, or one of his associates, stabbed the dad-of-two to death.

Griffiths said after Mr Corridon was attacked at his mum’s house in New Hall Lane, Norris Green, on February 27, he got a call from Nelson.

He told his defence counsel, Andrew Menary, QC : “He said the kid (David Corridon) was in the house. We left him in a bad way. Find out if he’s OK. He sounded shook up, in shock. It all hit me at once that something had gone wrong. I got on the phone to Kelly and said they’ve ***ked this up, they’ve beat him up, and she started to freak out.

“She was kicking off saying why have you gone to the house while he was there?”

Mr Menary asked: “Is this how you intended it to happen?”

He replied: “Never at all.”

Griffiths described seeing Kelly Smith in the hours after the attack and how she had a “breakdown” in front of him when she found out David Corridon had died.

He said: “She was distressed. She was crying. She was screaming ‘Why is he dead?’”

He then spoke of telling Nicholas Nelson over the phone.

He said: “At first, he thought I was messing, saying whatever. I said the kid’s dead. He said this phone’s going. He was lashing it.”

In the days following the killing, Griffiths said he met up with Nelson twice to go over what happened.

He said: “He said ‘Lad, it just went mad’. I felt sick.

“I asked him who took the knife? He said he didn’t see no knife.

“I said he hasn’t stabbed himself. Who were with you?

“He said you don’t know them, like he was trying to avoid the question.

“It got heated.”

Griffiths was arrested three weeks after Mr Corridon died and at first refused to answer questions.

But, after a day of interrogation, he named Nicholas Nelson, though he maintained he didn’t know who his accomplices were.

Mr Menary said: “There is an unwritten rule that criminals don’t grass up other people involved. But you did give names to the police. Why did you break that rule?”

Griffiths said: “Because he had been killed for nothing. I thought I’m drawing a line. I’m telling them what happened regardless of the consequences.”